


What Casey Did

by PixenGreen



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst and Humor, Bodies in Space, Gen, Multiverse, What Casey Did
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-17
Updated: 2018-06-17
Packaged: 2019-05-24 09:31:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14952099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PixenGreen/pseuds/PixenGreen
Summary: Inspired by the Bodies-Verse, in which Darcy Lewis gets a letter and a lost journal from her cousin's Swaps





	1. The Plot Bunny

**Author's Note:**

> Author’s Note: This plot bunny came into my head the second or third time I read through everything I could find on the Bodies-Verse. The ending to a sentence, “and we don’t talk about what Casey did”, made me stop and wonder, what exactly did Casey do? After a while I found that I was re-reading that chapter of Bodies in Space just to ponder that statement in the larger context of everything else that Darcy’s family did. At that point the plot bunny crawled into a dark part of my brain and had baby plot bunnies. They are adorable, if somewhat prone to insanity.
> 
> The majority of the work is done through Casey’s journal entries. They will start being posted in a few days. I have an ending in sight to it, but I wanted to get the preliminaries up first so that maybe I can get some feedback on it. I don’t have plans to write it into the main storylines, other than one or two cameo shots between journal entries. I do have a playlist for this fic and you should expect to see snippets of the lyrics here and there to enhance the emotional angle.
> 
> Remember that the journal is begun when Casey’s a high school freshman and her early entries will be much less complicated than they will be later on after she’s Swapped a few years. 
> 
> Many thanks to BairnSidhe who put the bunny in my brain in the first place.

Darcy did not go home. Darcy went to Crazy Grandma Bahrenburg’s place. She told her grandmother about it, and her grandmother wrote it all down in a blue leather-bound notebook. The kind with no lines, although Crazy Grandma Bahrenburg’s neat block print didn’t need it. And it let her draw stuff, although it was frustrating trying to explain an image. Words were her thing, not pictures. She’d see if it happened again, and maybe the blue book would fill up like the purple one her Mom had that she read sometimes but wouldn’t share with Darcy or Dad. Crazy Grandma Bahrenburg said it could happen more and more, and as it did, she’d learn to feel it coming and get safe. She finally let Darcy read the other journals. Some of the colored journals said they delayed the switch by a day to get to safety for their soul-swap. Some of them said they fell in love when switched. Most went through time and space; some just went through space to another place in the same time, and how far back was random it seemed.  
-Bodies in Time, chapter 1

 

He spent a long time talking with Mrs. Bahrenburg about the swaps. Her whole line, mothers to daughters back so far she kept some of the journals in sealed boxes.  
-Bodies in Time, chapter 2

It was an impossible wish, but sometimes impossible wishes came true for her family.  
-Bodies in Space, chapter 31

“You kept your swap alive,” Steve said slowly, trying to keep his breaths even for her to copy. “That’s what you’re supposed to do. You keep yourself alive, and you keep your swap alive, because the universe needs your swap, and you need you. Everything else is negotiable.”  
-Bodies in Space, chapter 55

Steve got to meet a few other cousins as July neared and plans for the fourth got made, although he was pushing even his recall at about the thirtieth bouncy young lady with eyes that hid steel.  
“So, that’s Casey? Or is that Megan?”  
“No, Casey is over there in the introvert’s corner with the art stuff. You’ll like her, she’s fun. That’s Kelsey, she’s getting her MD right now and will make you help her with flash cards. Megan is her sister and she’s an ME, mother of the teen bugging Aunt Camilla over by the lemonade.”  
“Why do I feel like all of them could kill me?”  
“They probably could,” Darcy shrugged. “Aunt Megan freaked out her boss once because she knew the different shades of purple from two vectors of nightshade poisoning, her sister’s swap was Genghis Kahn, Aunt Camilla led a siege once, and we don’t talk about what Casey did. I still don’t know who her swap was, and I’ve been studying the histories since you and I started breaking the rules. Grandma Bahrenburg became the family library for all the accounts, and I inherited.”  
“Wow,” Steve said, a little slack-jawed.  
“Close your mouth, Punk,” Bucky said as he was towed past by a grandmother to help with the fire pit. “You’ll catch flies.”  
-Bodies in Space, chapter 57


	2. The Fall

Through the crowd I was crying out and  
In your place there were a thousand other faces  
I was disappearing in plain sight  
Heaven help me I need to make it right  
No light, Florence +The Machine

 

Maybe she had died and all of this was some afterlife set up to punish her. Maybe she had created Grandma Bahrenburg out of a desperate need to make sense of hell. She was somewhere else, body dead and gone, and her mind left behind to spin forever through the polaroid snapshots of a thousand lives. She was falling from the tower, falling from the bridge, and her skin waited endlessly for the impact against the water below that would be harder than diamond boulders crushing her body.

The impact never came.

Still falling, and she was screaming although she couldn’t hear her voice. Her mind faded away while she fell. A star falling through the velvet night until there was no more fire, until everything that had been part of her burned away leaving only a human form kneeling on the grass. Nameless, voiceless, empty of everything. 

Then she was no longer alone. Someone stood next to her in the night. Someone was bending down, kneeling beside her, taking her hands and removing a heavy wool shawl to wrap around her. There was a voice that sounded like it was coming through an ocean, distorted, that came into focus after a long breath.

“That’s it, sweetheart. Breathe with me now. You’re back with us. It’s over. It’s over, Casey. You’re home and no one will ever have to know unless you say so.”

Casey shivered. She looked up and found that she was standing in her own backyard. A candle burned on the table on the porch. She let herself be steered inside and cared for. Grandma washed her face and hands with a warm cloth, wrapped her in an enormous flannel nightgown, combed her hair out while Casey held a mug of hot milk between hands that shook, helped her into a bed heaped high with quilts and afghans. Casey found that she couldn’t let go of her hand. Grandma smiled and kissed her forehead. Then she lay down next to Casey on top of all those blankets. 

“Grandma,” Casey’s voice was rough. “I couldn’t save him. All I could do was watch him fall.”

Tears came then. Quietly. Dripping slowly all night long, even after she had fallen into exhausted sleep.


	3. The Letter

No light, no light in your bright blue eyes  
I never knew daylight could be so violent  
A revelation in the light of day  
You can't choose what stays and what fades away  
No light, Florence +The Machine

 

Dear Darcy,

I know that you’ve wondered why I never talked about my Swap. Your mind teases out riddles like that; things that don’t add up right and motives that are all twisted around in seventeen directions at once. I’ve met your Swaps. If anyone could come into this family and survive all the craziness we deal in it would be them. I’m sure of that. Also, you protect your own. That’s a family trait and comes from the same drive that keeps one generation after another plowing through.

If I had my way I’d erase what I did from the journals. I’d put a note next to my name that says that I got lost upholding our finest traditions. Grandma let me keep my secrets even though she ordered me to keep my journal instead of pitching it all straight into the ocean when I got back. I’m sending it to you now. I’m on the last leg of my Swap journey and I’m not sure what will happen afterwards.   
Do you remember that fourth of July picnic you came to, the first one you brought Steve and Bucky to when you were all helping Sandi? I heard Steve talking to her one night, telling her that we keep our Swaps alive no matter what else because the universe needs them and you need you. He was so right. I kept my Swap alive against all the probabilities because there was no other way for either of us. 

When I first learned about Swaps, I had all the little girl romantic fantasies of saving the universe. “Save the cheerleader”, right? I still think the writers on that show must have been distant cousins somewhere. Even when I read some of the journals my brain refused to understand the bloody parts. It was all shining armor and survival against all the odds and I never connected that with the pages that talked about what it cost. 

I know you’ll understand me when I say that when I did start counting up the butcher’s bill I had to make the choice to keep my Swap alive or let it go to hell. By then I knew no matter where I drew the line, for myself, there was no way to win. No way out or around except through. Which is where I’m off to one last time. This is my journal, to put with the rest of them. Read it, but take care of yourself before and after. Lean on your boys, between the three of you I know it’ll be remembered and I’ll know that out there at least somebody understood. I want somebody to remember that I existed. I want absolution for what follows after and I know I won’t get it.

One hell of an introductory letter, isn’t it?

Have you ever read a fairy tale and seen the truth that lays underneath it? Between the lines are a cheerleader and a rebel. A looking glass and a house of cards. 12 princesses dancing through their slippers while the world sleeps. When I first met my Swap I thought I was going mad. Then I knew that it was everything else but me. 

So I told Jack to call me Alice, and we climbed a beanstalk to slay a giant…

 

************ Interlude ****************

Darcy put down the letter and unpacked the box that had come with it. On top was a box of tissues and four old-fashioned handkerchiefs. Next, in a sleeve of bubble wrap, was a bottle of whiskey. At the bottom, wrapped in a faded and somewhat tattered piece of silk, was a brown journal. A post-it note was attached to the cover. Here there be dragons.


End file.
